While in the ear of royalty this message he imparts :

"Kings, would ye safely reign, your thrones must be your people's hearts."

Hail, giant Spirit of the Times!-but let us ever see

RELIGION, LIBERTY, as now, walk hand in hand with thee;

Then shall all nations bless thy course-then shall the world indeed
From superstition be released, and from oppression freed.

J. HOLLAND.

THE RUINS OF PESTUM.*

THEY stand between the mountains and the sea.
Awful memorials, but of whom we know not!
The seaman, passing, gazes from the deck.
The buffalo-driver, in his shaggy cloak,
Points to the work of magic, and moves on.
Time was, they stood along the crowded street,
Temples of gods! and on their ample steps
What various habits, various tongues beset
The brazen gates for prayer and sacrifice!—
How many centuries did the sun go round
From Mount Alburnus to the Tyrrhene sea,
While, by some spell rendered invisible,
Or, if approached, approached by him alone
Who saw as though he saw not, they remained
As in the darkness of a sepulchre,

Waiting the appointed time! All, all within
Proclaims that Nature had resumed her right,
And taken to herself what man renounced ;
No cornice triglyph, or worn abacus,
But with thick ivy hung, or branching fern,

Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure !-
From my youth upward have I longed to tread
This classic ground.-And am I here at last?
Wandering at will through the long porticoes,
And catching, as through some majestic grove,
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos like,
Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up,
Towns like the living rock from which they grew?
A cloudy region, black and desolate,
Where once a slave withstood a world in arms.-
The air is sweet with violets, running wild†
'Mid broken sculptures and fallen capitals;

The temples of Pæstum are three in number; and have survived nearly nine centuries, the total destruction of the city. Tradition is silent concern ing them; but they must have existed now between two and three thousand

years.

The violets of Pæstum were as proverbial as the roses. tions them with the honey of Hybla

Martial men

Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts,
Sailed slowly by two thousand years ago,

For Athens, when a ship, if north-east winds
Blew from the Pæstan garden, slacked her course
The birds are hushed awhile; and nothing stirs,
Save the shrill-voiced cigala flitting round
On the rough pediment to sit and sing;

Or the green lizard rustling through the grass,
And up the luted shaft with short quick motion,
To vanish in the chinks that time has made.-
In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk
Seen at his setting, and a flood of light
Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries,
(Gigantic shadows, broken and confused,
Across the innumerable columns flung)
In such an hour he came, who saw and told,
Led by the mighty Genius of the Place!
Walls of some capital city first appeared,

Half razed, half sunk, or scattered as in scorn ;—
And that within them? what but in the midst
These Three in more than their original grandeur
And, round about, no stone upon another ?
As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear,
And, turning, left them to the elements

ROGERS

THE SHIELD.

BY THOMAS BRYDSON.

THE old village clock struck six in the afternoon, as the landlord of the principal inn uncorked a bottle of porter and poured out its contents, with words of commendation, to three young men who seemed but newly returned from a rural excursion. "I houp, gentlemen," he continued, "ye have had an agreeable walk. Ye wud fin 'oot the castle easily by the road I tell't you o'." "Yes," said the eldest looking of the three, "but what interested us more than any thing we saw there, was the figure of a shield painted on one of the rocks in the wild glen through which we passed. The colours have suffered by time, but the outline is perfectly distinct, and beautifully traced. A shepherd of whom we inquired its history could tell us little else than that its origin was unknown, as it had been only lately discovered in the clearing of the woods-perhaps you are better informed." The landlord took a seat without waiting for invitation, and placing his right hand, half-shut, upon the table, looked straight forward, in a manner that presaged either a very long, or a very perplexed, or a very important story." I'ts noo